Ferrets are back in town

FACING FREEDOM: Ferret awaits release on the Cheyenne
River Sioux Reservation near Whitehorse, South Dakota

Dale Carter

Black-footed ferrets
once roamed the prairies of South Dakota. But the destruction of
prairie dog towns vastly reduced the ferret's habitat and pushed it
onto the endangered species list. Now, the Cheyenne River Sioux
tribe is restoring ferrets to the reservation, where the predators
fill an important niche in the fast-disappearing shortgrass prairie
ecosystem.

So far, the tribe has released 38 of
75 ferrets northeast of Whitehorse. A third of the ferrets are
coming from a wild population discovered south of the reservation
in Conata Basin near Wall, S.D. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
which manages endangered species, approved the reintroduction and
provided the tribe with the captive-bred
animals.

"This is one of the last-remaining
suitable habitats for ferrets," says Hayley Dikeman, a
prairie-management biologist with the tribe. Dikeman cites the
extensive prairie dog towns and lack of development on the
reservation. She is hopeful that the reintroduction will work to
boost the population of black-footed ferrets, now grown from 18 to
as many as 600 in both captivity and in the
wild.

Tribal administrator J.R. LaPlante says
that bringing back ferrets to prey on prairie dogs is part of the
tribe's decade-old prairie management plan. "We've been successful
in reintroducing elk and bison," he says, "so there's no reason to
think we won't be successful with the
ferrets."